The 2013 Triple Crown season has concluded, and once again, the racing world must go yet another year without a winner of racing’s most elusive prize.

Despite there being no Triple Crown victor, there were still several memorable performances – both equine and human – that racing fans were lucky to witness. As Jennie Rees points out in her latest column in the Louisville Courier-Journal, both Orb and Oxbow deserve plenty of credit for ‘dancing every dance’ and achieving as much as they did.

They do deserve praise, but this is something that needs to be done anyway. It may be time to revive the bonus system with points in each leg with the stipulation that horses must run in all three legs (with the ONLY exceptions horses who enter a TC race but do not get in off the also-eligible list), with say $1 Million to the top points earner, $500,000 for second, $250,000 for third, $100,000 for fourth, $75,000 for fifth and $25,000 for sixth. That would provide enough incentive to run in all three legs.

Nayrod

They were amazing and ran a great race. Kudos to the boys!

Nayrod

Weak, I doubt that. These horse’s had to work hard to get to this level. Remember, these are new 3 Year olds. Maybe, people are forgetting these aren’t machine but living young creatures.

Roisin

Well said ! Some people view them as machines that are supposed to make money and bring fame.

jetto

We went 25 years between Citation & Secretariat – it’s not supposed to be easy.

swaps55

Pletcher is proving modern training theory. Train horses for occasional track appearances. the theory is a fresh horse can beat a better horse that is being raced more often. And yet all the other horses that skipped the Preakness and the Derby to focus on the Belmont finished behind two of the three horses that appeared in all three legs this year. If Palace Malice had experienced a training mishap then Oxbow would have won two of the three legs. The new challenge will be for modern trainers to develop star horses that can race more often without long interval rests to recharge energy. Shug and Wayne did a good job almost doing that this year. But this may be a more mediocre crop…time will tell.